The Oceans’ Oddest Creatures and Why They Matter

Marine creatures are among the strangest, most beautiful and least known animals on Earth. Their intriguing mating strategies, defensive weapons, shape-shifting and camouflage abilities make for great stories and amazing photographs.

Some of the best of those tales and images appear in the new book Sex, Drugs and Sea Slime, by marine biologist Ellen Prager.

"I’ve always been intrigued by these wonderful stories about marine life that most people never get to hear, You know they’re the stories that over beers your colleagues tell you," Prager said. "But it’s not the stuff that typically gets out to the public."

Prager scoured the scientific literature, and her colleagues' brains, to gather an impressive collection of amazing images and little-known facts about marine animals and why they matter.

"I really hope to get this message across that no matter how big, small or really weird a creature is in the ocean, they’re not only important to the ocean ecosystem itself, but also to humankind," she said.

From regenerating conch penises to self-amputating octopuses, Prager shares some of her favorites with Wired.com in the interview below and the gallery above.

Wired.com: If you had to dig so hard to find them, these are probably stories that people who study these types of creatures might not have even known.

Ellen Prager: Yes, they may not have known. Plus today, most of the scientists studying marine life, a lot of them work on things like molecular genomics, DNA, very detailed specific aspects of marine life, but we don’t really focus on just basic biology or taxonomy. A lot of the basic biology was done in the 1950s and '60s through the 1980s. And now it’s not sexy to do just basic biology.

And what we’re finding out now, is that there is so much to learn from them in terms of biomedical research and in biotechnology. You know, it’s one of those things where all of a sudden you smack yourself on the head and realize, 'Oh nature really did get this right.' And we can learn from that.

Wired.com: Why do you think these animals in particular might be good ambassadors, or a good bridge to the public?

Prager: I think there’s a couple of reasons. I think that this connection to human health and applications in biotechnology is one area. Certainly I think the fact that more than 2 billion people rely on the ocean for the major source of their protein is another. Then there's jobs and the economy: If you really look at the number of jobs that are related to the oceans, either through fishing or tourism and recreation, it’s hundreds of millions. And I think sometimes we don’t look at the oceans that way.

We think of it in terms of it’s beautiful, it’s incredible to see whales, we love the ocean. But in terms of our economy and our health, it’s critically important. A good example is what happened in Somalia: The guys who are now pirates used to be fishermen. Their waters were overfished, and they didn’t have anything else to do, so they became pirates.

Wired.com: What's the biggest threat to marine biodiversity?

Prager: I really don’t like to say 'biggest' threat, because you can’t really say there’s one. There’s a couple that are at the top of the heap so to speak. There's climate change, overfishing and probably pollution. And those things are probably causing habitat loss. And then there's invasive species and poor management of development.

And the other problem is some of those are global factors, but in certain areas you have one or the other or something else causing more harm, so they can be very specific to a location as well.

Wired.com: The oceans are huge, and these problems are really big, too. And as with a lot of big problems, a lot of people probably don't feel like there's anything they can do.

Prager: I think that’s a really good point, so let me make just one other. While some of these issues, like climate change are really big topics that need to be addressed on very large scales, what we think is true in marine ecosystems is that if you can control some of the local problems, those habitats and those animals may be more resistant to climate-change problems.

Yes, we’ve got to fix the global problems, but we also have to fix the problems that will make our marine systems more resilient locally. So in that sense I think people can really make some differences.

Above:

Jawfish

The male jawfish is incubating eggs in its mouth.

"That’s parental care for you!" Prager said. "He incubates the eggs in his mouth, and he’ll periodically spit them out, sort of twirl them around to aerate them and then suck them back into his mouth."

"They live in sandy areas, mostly in reef areas," she said. "They burrow in the sand, and they use their mouths, not only as incubators, but they use them like plows like bulldozers. That’s how they create their burrows."

Photo: Steven Kovacs

Blanket Octopus

Prager searched unsuccessfully for two years while writing her book for a photograph of the mysterious blanket octopus. She finally found the one above, after the book had been completed, so it isn't included, but she shared it with Wired.com.

"All male cephalopods have a specialized arm that they use to pass a package of sperm from their bodies to the females," Prager said. "But in the male blanket octopus, he actually self-amputates his arm and gives that to her as well."

"They only have one specialized arm, and unfortunately, once he self-amputates his arm, he kicks the proverbial bucket also. They die, that’s it," she said. "And then the female is just swimming around with a lot of male arms in her body."

"I like to say the male is kind of a martyr for the species, and, well, the female ... I’ll let you fill in the word for that."

Photo: Steve Hamedl

Octopus Sex

The male octopus is using his baby-maker arm to pass a package of sperm from his body to a female’s.

"That’s it, right there, that’s the heat of the action, as good as it gets," Prager said. "He just hands it over to her, and that’s it. Then she lays eggs, and she will use that packet of sperm to fertilize her eggs. He gets to keep his arm."

"The octopus and the cuttlefish, they will actually lay eggs with different paternities," she said. "So all her eggs won’t have one father. They’ll have different paternities. It may be because, genetically some combination might have a predisposition to survive."

Nudibranch Sex

"I think that the nudibranchs are some of the most colorful, beautiful creatures on the planet," Prager said. "Most people have never seen them. But if you go on the web and you type in nudibranch and look for images, it’s unbelievable."

"One of the strange facts I found about them, is that some of the nudibranchs are highly cannibalistic," she said. "So cannibalistic that even while having sex, they’ll try to eat each other. The one who wins sort of comes out on top, so to speak, and saves the reproductive organs for the last juicy bite."

Nudibranch Eggs

The creature above is known as the fried-egg nudibranch for its yellow spots that resemble eggs served sunny-side-up.

"They lay the eggs in a template of slime, and that creates that sort of … it almost looks like cake frosting," Prager said. "The very bright colors of the sea slugs, as well as their eggs, are thought to be a warning sign to potential egg eaters or sea-slug eaters, that 'don’t eat me' because some of them have toxins, some harbor stinging cells, some have spines, so they don’t make for good snacks."

Conch Sex

This photo landed in Prager's book after she e-mailed biologist Al Stoner of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"I knew he had been studying queen conchs for years," Prager said. "And I gave him sort of the gist of the book, and I said, ‘Do you have anything interesting about the conch?’"

"And so he sent me back, literally, a quote that said, 'There’s a real advantage to studying the reproductive biology of an animal that is big, slow, mates for hours on end, and has a penis half its body length.'"

After a little more research, Prager discovered that conch biologists have been writing limericks and poems about the conch's penis, which is known as the verge, for years.

"Then I saw someplace where they said about how the male sidles up to the female, and because his shell is so big, that’s why his verge is so long," she said. "He has to go outside of his shell and around and under the female."

"But there’s a little problem. Once its outside of its shell, crabs and eels are only too happy to take advantage of his vulnerability. But it’s OK: Lose one, they just grow another. They can regenerate their penis."

Parrotfish

This photo of a parrotfish is a rare depiction of a strange behavior.

"Not all species of parrotfish, but some species of parrotfish at night, essentially sleep in holes in the reef and they spin a cocoon of mucus," Prager said. "They’re excreting the mucus out of their mouths.... It’s like they’re spinning a cocoon around themselves. It’s really weird."

"We think it’s either to mask their scent from predators, or it could be toxic. I’ve also heard that it could be to keep parasites off them," she said. "It’s not exactly clear what role that plays."

Squid Sex

These squids are having sex above a mass of eggs that have already been laid on the seafloor.

"This is squid that schools, so it’s probably a mass orgy going on there, and those are the eggs that are being laid down afterward," Prager said.

"This is probably the male wrapping his arms around the female," she said. "It’s part of the embrace. He’s a cephalopod, so the male has to take the package of sperm from his body and put it into the female."

Pygmy Seahorse

Pygmy seahorses are less than an inch long and have an incredible ability to camouflage themselves.

"You can see that they can change the color of their skin," Parger said. "This one obviously has coloration that matches the surrounding sea fan."

"It really is an odd creature when you think of it being a fish," she said. "They have snouts that are almost like a horse’s snout, they have tiny, tiny see-through fins, and their eyes can rotate independently of one another. If you really look at the aspects of their biology, it’s crazy that they’re fish."